Amerapoora, Palace of the White Elephant 1855

Linnaeus Tripe made this photograph of the Palace of the White Elephant in Amerapoora, Burma, using the Calotype process. The image speaks to the complex politics of imagery under colonialism. Note the cannons in the foreground of the image – war machines sit incongruously alongside the delicate architecture. It highlights the military and political context within which Tripe was working in Burma at the time. Tripe was employed by the British East India Company. Photography, in this context, became a tool for documenting and surveying colonial spaces. The photograph flattens the three-dimensional space and freezes a moment in time, making it easier to classify and codify. To understand photographs like these, we need to look at institutional archives and historical records to appreciate their meaning in their own time and how they can be re-evaluated today.